Older workers adding value - four case studies
Four UK companies who actively seek to employ older workers were among the 10 global recipients of International Innovative Employer Awards, presented by the US not-for-profit organisation AARP in association with The Age and Employment Network (TAEN). Tara Craig from Personnel Today profiles the winners.
Agewell - Sandwell Primary Care Trust
Sandwell Primary Care Trust provides NHS primary care for people in Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, Tipton, Wednesbury and West Bromwich.The trust employs 1,269 people, 24% of whom are aged 50 or over.
Agewell is the community development side of the business, undertaking consultation work with older people about issues of interest to them in Sandwell and helping them get their views across.
Between 2001 and 2003, Sandwell ran the largest of eight national pre-retirement healthcheck pilots, targeting people aged 50 to 65. The pilots showed that conventional pre-retirement initiatives were not appropriate and were often delivered too late to be able to make any significant changes. Agewell started its Midlife Planning initiative to target people at an age when they can still make changes and take control of their future.
Stuart Munger is Agewell's Midlife Planning co-ordinator. Once the pilot scheme had shown the flaw in pre-retirement provisions, he and his colleagues investigated what companies were offering their staff. The results were not encouraging - companies were targeting people just two to five years before retirement, providing information on post-retirement finance, but very little else.
"Health didn't seem to be an issue," says Munger.
The Midlife Planning team spoke to a number of people about their needs. Most said they wanted information before it was too late - ideally when they were aged between 45 and 50 - across four categories: finance, health, leisure and relationships.
Munger says the area of relationships hadn't been picked up on before.
"People were saying: 'When I retire, I'll have to spend 24 hours a day with my partner', whereas before they tended to spend most of their time with their colleagues."
Leisure was another less obvious area - people without hobbies suddenly had to think of ways to fill their time. Munger says: "It's not retirement, it's just another stage of life".
Having originally focused on the NHS, today Midlife Planning can provide pre-retirement courses for any kind of business, anywhere in the country. It now generates income, and any revenue made gets fed back into its budget.
It recently ran a pre-retirement course for a local housing association that wanted all its staff, regardless of age, to attend. Munger says: "The two sessions were packed, with more than 40 people turning up. There were quite a few people in their 20s, who were there partly to pick up information to feed back to their parents."
Midlife Planning's next step is to deliver a series of courses in conjunction with its mental health team, which has recognised the benefits of the courses in terms of the mental wellbeing of people who are retiring. And, given the state of the economy, Munger is also keen that the courses focus on financial elements.
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